Horace Nelson

Horace Aloysius Nelson (February 16, 1878 – 1962) was a Penobscot political leader and the father of dancer and actress Molly Spotted Elk (born Mary Alice Nelson).

Nelson was born to Peter "Dindy" Nelson and Mary Francis Mitchell Nelson on Indian Island, a Penobscot reservation near Old Town, Maine, U.S., where he lived his entire life with the exception of a few years during college. He attended Old Town High School and, at age 22, was the second Penobscot to graduate (after baseball player Louis Sockalexis). He was the first to study at Dartmouth College, graduating around 1904.

Nelson served as the Penobscot Representative in the Maine Legislature from 1921 to 1922 and as the Penobscot governor from 1939 to 1941. In addition to trapping, fishing, and gathering sweet-grass for his wife, Philomene Saulis Nelson (1888–1977), to make baskets from, which were standard tasks for Penobscot men, Nelson also contributed to the family household by keeping a vegetable garden and he had a variety of paid jobs such as ferry master to Indian Island, surveyor, security guard, and laborer working for a shipbuilder and a railroad company. Music was his hobby and he occasionally played for the Penobscot Indian Band and encouraged his children to play music.